Word: gacaca
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...humanitarian law. But it was slow to get moving - three years passed before the first trial started. Finally, when it became clear in 2003 that the court was proceeding too slowly, prosecutors shifted their focus to high-level cases and transferred the rest to national courts or Rwanda's gacaca system, styled after South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission, in which alleged perpetrators get lighter sentences if they acknowledge their guilt before an audience of victims or their families...
...diversity of society. Sandel said that respecting pluralism was essential and that a public philosophy “that engages differences” is preferable to one that “floats above moral and religious differences.” He cited the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and the Gacaca tribunals in South Africa and Rwanda as examples of successful efforts to reconcile communal differences in society. Sandel’s discussion of creating a progressive public philosophy received supportive reviews from members of the audience. “What appealed to me was creating a narrative to support...
...next few years, trials for around 50,000 suspects accused of the most serious crimes - the planners and leaders of the genocide - will go through Rwanda's conventional criminal courts. But those accused of murder, violent assault, torture and looting will be tried in nearly 11,000 traditional gacaca courts like the one sitting in judgment on Ntirushwamaboko. Gacaca (pronounced ga-cha-cha) proceedings, named for the Rwandan word for the grass on which they are traditionally held, employ "people of impeccable integrity" elected by villagers to serve as judge and jury. That means that in Zivu, and in thousands...
...will be sentenced this week. He faces seven to 12 years, but the time served will be taken into account. As a reward for confessing, half his sentence can be spent working three days a week in community service, planting trees or building roads, schools and hospitals nearby. The gacaca courts focus on local grievances, so property crime cases are also routinely heard. During Ntirushwamaboko's trial last week, he also described the looting of houses, crops and cattle, and mentioned his accomplices. These episodes roused fierce accusations, too. Murdered family members can't be replaced; cows and other chattels...
...terrifying the families of their victims. "Some of these people still have the hearts of animals," says Dusabe Theoneste, 41, a farmer who lost much of his family during the genocide. "They haven't changed from when they were taken to prison." But Ntirushwamaboko's case shows how the gacaca system could help heal Rwanda. As he accompanies a journalist into the house of Febronia Mukamusoni, the sister of the man he admits to killing, Ntirushwamaboko is greeted with a smile. "Five years ago, if I saw him and I had the means, I would have killed him," says Mukamusoni...